1989, India. Starring Sridevi, Aroona Irani, Jagdeep, Pran, Sunny Deol, Anupam Kher, Gulshan Grover, Anjana Mumtaz. Directed by Harmesh Malhotra.

One of the many things that really steams my monkeys is when a movie's summary sounds like a tremendous amount of fun, but the actual experience of watching it is more akin to having someone hammer nails into your sternum. In other words -- it's an interesting story, but you really wouldn't want to experience it yourself. You know, like some time you've sat down with a friend and the friend says, "Last week I watched a movie where a roller skating chimp in a rhinestone g-string swings around a cricket bat and has to save the world from nuclear annihilation." And you, being a wise and tasteful viewer, immediately think to yourself, "Ahh, this does indeed sound like a grand ol' time at the movies!" But then your friend sighs and says, "Actually, it was pretty boring. You're better off not watching it."

So you go home for the night, but secretly you are thinking to yourself, "I don't know. That monkey has a cricket bat and a g-string. I bet it's all right." So, against the advice of your friend, you watch the movie anyway, and it turns out that, yep, it's pretty much a soul-crushing bore. And you're angry not so much because you wasted time watching the movie as you are angry that someone could make a movie with a chimp in a sequined g-string waving a cricket bat and have the execution come out so horribly boring. And not only that, but then this means that the idea for a chimp in a sequined g-string waving a cricket bat has been wasted on a rotten movie, and now someone with the potential for making a good movie about a chimp in a sequined g-string waving a cricket bat can't make that movie, because the idea has already been used up.

Nigahen is such a movie. If I say to you, "Sonny Deol fights snake spirits who shoot laser beams out of their eyes while some priest in a fake Rollie Fingers moustache rolls around a lot during wind and lightning storms," then you're going to think, "Sounds pretty good to me. And there will be musical numbers!" And I was with you, right up to the point where I started watching the movie and realized that, in reality, it was going to be a slightly tougher row to hoe than I first thought.

But let's begin with Sonny Deol rather than the movie itself. Since one of my goals for 2006 is to increase the Bollywood representation on Teleport City, it's was pretty much a given that we'd be getting to Sonny Deol pretty quickly, though I didn't expect it to be in a film like this. I assumed it would be one of the movies where he's cracking Pakistani skulls and blowing stuff up. Yet somehow the supernatural drama Nigahen came up in the queue before Maa Tujhe Salaam, Indian, Border, or any of the other roughly eighteen thousand films he made in a three-year span where he plays a heroic and patriotic Indian officer fighting evil, moustache-twirling Pakistani terrorists -- though, to be fair, Nigahen does include a moustache or two well worth twirling.

Sonny Deol is sort of the Sylvester Stallone of India. Like other muscular action heroes, he doesn't have a tough name (Sonny, Sylvester, Arnold). He's good-looking in a rough and tumble sort of way -- more of a likeable lug than an actual sex symbol. He's a bad-ass, but he's also a nice guy, willing to punch you in the face or dance with you through the Alps. Like Stallone, he went through a period where he was pretty respectable (his Rocky/Nighthawks phase), but then started appearing in more and more ludicrous flag-waving actioners (his Rambo phase). All in all, however, Sonny Deol is pretty much a Bollywood institution -- not on the level of Amitabh, but still a pretty big and enduring part of the scene.

So, with Sonny's place in Bollywood summarized, let's move on to Nigahen, which is a sequel to the film Nagina, which I have not seen since no one seems to offer it for rent, and the one or two places I looked for it to purchase, should I want to apply my dollars in such a way (and I don't know that I would), listed it as out of stock. But I think I can get the gist of thinks, thanks in no small part to the convenient visual summary of the film provided during the credits of this sequel. The basics seem to be that we have some snake spirits, they protect some people, a wizard with a handlebar moustache wants a magic gem. There may be more to it than that, but that's enough to get you to the point you need to be to grasp the sequel, which seems to be more or less the same thing, except the two leads from the previous film are killed off, presumably in between movies, but you needn't let that bother you since the same actress (the lovely Sridevi) will be appearing as the daughter of the character she played in the first film.

We meet her first as a child being adopted by her grandfather, or possibly uncle. We then skip eighteen years ahead, as the now-grown Neelam returns to her ancestral home to witness the fact that the progress of time for the other characters has been realized by having them wear really shoddy silver wigs. What she doesn't know about the house and her family history is that her mother could transform into a snake, and two more snakes (her deceased parents?) show up from time to time to watch over her and communicate to her by shooting animated blue beams that cause the film to freeze almost as if someone was simply drawing on a still photo. This highlights one of the most peculiar and impressive feats of this film, which is to take a film made in 1989 and make it look like a film from 1979.

Neelam also isn't privy to the fact that her next door neighbor is a shrieking, screaming, sweating ranting, raving holy man lunatic named Garaknath (Anupam Kher). He's got the twirling-worthy moustache here, in case you are keeping track of that sort of thing. Garaknath has a tendency to sit cross-legged on the floor until wild bolts of lightning and gusts of wind blow him over, at which time he will inevitably spring to his feet, wave his trident around, and scream, "Bhairavnath!" over and over, which happens to be the name of his mentor, killed in the first film by the heroic couple who were off-handedly disposed of between the end credits of that film and beginning of this one. Garaknath is so committed to stealing the sacred gem his guru sought in the first film that he has sworn to eat nary a morsel until it is in his hands and he can use it to become all-powerful, whatever that may mean. For a guy who hasn't eaten in a decade or more, Garaknath is looking pretty good, and by good, I mean he has mangy hair and sweats profusely, which the camera lovingly captures in a series of close-ups that would make Sergio Leone proud.

That's pretty much the plot in a nutshell: crazy holy man tries to steal sacred gem, and noble girl guided by snakes foils him. You might be thinking to yourself, "Hey, I thought Sunny Deol was in this." He does show up eventually to fall in love with Neelam, and it turns out he is a snake boy who was raised by the villainous Garaknath, who among other things, kept him in a basket for fourteen years. Who knew living in a basket for fourteen years makes you come out looking like Sonny Deol? Deol's character is pretty much a buffoon here, and Sonny has the open-mouthed, slack-jawed look of befuddlement down pat. Other than that, he doesn't have much reason to be other than to hang around and occasionally drive a tractor.

So if you think that sweaty moustachio'd madmen trying to steal magical gems from snake girls sounds like the makings of a good movie, you're right. And if you further suspect that the final results aren't nearly as much fun as they sound -- well, frankly, given how the whole intro was about that very phenomenon (which I call the "Something Weird phenomenon," in honor of the many titles released by Something Weird that sound cool but end up being godawful boring), it's not that impressive if you guess it applies to Nigahen. A lot of this movie is just flat out uninteresting, which is pretty remarkable given the number of snakes shooting magic beams out of their eyes we have on display here. There's a lot of comic relief from a guy whose shtick seems to be based entirely on an "Oh my goodness, my wife is so fat!" routine that wouldn't have even gotten a chuckle out of a Depression era vaudeville crowd. Maybe if he'd also dressed in drag and been swatted with brooms -- at least then he could have been a hit with fans of Hong Kong variety shows. But there's way too much of that in between supernatural snake action.

The editing only makes matters worse. And I say editing only under the good faith that they actually hired an editor, because any evidence of his craft is barely detectable in the film. When Neelam is hypnotized by the snakes, who then lead her on a slow somnambulistic stroll out of the house, across the lawn, and into the temple ruins where the sacred gem is hidden in a pretty obvious spot, we get to watch pretty much the whole stroll. It just goes on and on, until finally some lightning and wind kicks up to blow Garaknash over, so we cut to him rolling on the floor, then leaping up to yell, "Bhairavnath!"

And you better get used to him doing that, too, because he's pretty much the best part of the whole movie. With Sonny not being allowed to jump cars through office buildings or shoot grenade launchers, the bulk of the film's entertainment value comes form Garaknash chewing scenery with a voracious William Shatner-esque glee. Garaknesh is obviously an over-the-top comic book style villain, and actor Anupam Kher seems to operate under the assumption that the only way to play him is by going way over over-the-top. And if you think he might maybe look somewhat familiar, even though you haven't seen too many Bollywood films, then perhaps you're remembering him as the stern but loving father from Bend it Like Beckham, a movie that slightly annoys me because, seriously, no love for Parminder Nagra? Keira Knightley had to go and pull a Harrison Ford by stealing all the fame that should have been more evenly distributed. And Parminder? Hey, I have nothing against Keira (well, I have King Arthur against her), but Parminder Nagra is much hotter.

Uh, where was I? Oh yeah, Anupam Kher and his handlebar moustache, enduring through the ages. He was also in Ziddi some years later, also with Sonny Deol, where I think Sonny does get to drive a car through the front of an office building, or something like that. It was one of the first Bollywood action films I saw, and I can't remember a whole lot about it except that, well, it was kind of silly. And he was in Bride and Prejudice, so I guess there's a law saying that if you are trying to make a Bollywood/Hollywood crossover -- but not actually Bollywood/Hollywood -- then you should hire Anupam Kher. I know I would.

The other half of the film belongs to Sridevi, who spends most of the film walking around looking beautiful before she finally gets her snake powers and delivers a musical supernatural finale that actually does live up to the promise on which the rest of the film fails to deliver. Sridevi has been (and continues) acting in the Hindi film industry since getting her start as a child actor in 1967. Since then, she's made over 250 movies and was one of the biggest stars in Bollywood. She doesn't have an impressive moustache like Anupam Kher, but that's usually not what you're looking for in a Bollywood leading lady. She does have eyes to die for and is a decent actress. Together, she and Kher will pretty much make you forget poor Sonny Deol is even in this movie.

As I said, the finale of the movie, in which Garaknesh and Neelam battle one another through the use of song and dance and, weirdly enough, a magical mongoose made of bread, delivers everything you want it to. Too bad you had to sit through two hours of rather plodding production before that. To make matters worse, at least for us non-Hindi speakers, the subtitles stop about a third of the way into the film, and come back in the final third but out of phase with the action on the screen, so that the subtitles are appearing two or three lines after the dialogue they're supposed to be translating.

A pretty disappointing movie considering the premise I hear the first film was much better. Snake spirit movies are nothing out of the ordinary for Indian films, or for many other south Asian industries. Sometimes, it seems the Thai film industry is comprised of 70 percent snake spirit movies, twenty percent romantic comedies, and ten percent movies where guys smash each other with war chariots and big mallets. Even Hong Kong has more than it's share of snake spirit movies, so with so many to chose from, there's no real reason to settle for something as disappointing as Nigahen.

It's obvious that producer/director Harmesh Malhotra found himself with a surprise hit on his hands with the film Nagina and slapped this together with a minimum of effort and care in order to cash in on the success of the first film. It's a slapdash production right up until the end, which is worth skipping forward to if you happen to have the movie lying around, or if it is delivered to you one night by two snakes with mysterious intelligence. If such an event happens to you, be sure to throw your arms unto the heavens and scream, "Bhairavnath!" over and over for minutes on end. It'll be slightly more entertaining than sitting through Nigahen.

Labels: Bollywood, Horror: Just Plain Weird, Netflix Diary, Year: 1989